FRENCH REVOLUTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 December 1938, Page 2

FRENCH REVOLUTION

CELEBRATION OF ANNIVERSARY.

NATION-WIDE OBSERVANCE

Preparations are being made in France to celebrate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the French Revolution in a manner worthy of a movement one of whose fundamental principles was the State for the man and not the man for the State. The celebrations will be a feature of 1939. Every part of France will share in the celebrations. In anticipation of them, the Centre National du Tourisme has printed a special booklet, of which a first batch of 25,000 have already been sent to Great Britain and the United States. The booklet, “Souvenirs of the French Revolution, has been prepared under the control of the International Institute of the History o the French Revolution, on whose committee serve historians from France. Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Rumania, Brazil and Greece, with correspondent members in all countries* ’ ' France has commemorated the French Revolution in many ways, and in addition to monuments and statues, two itineraries of roads have t> e e n named respectively the “Route de la Marseillaise,” and the “Route Napoleon ” All along the roads the 500 volunteers from Marseilles took m their march to Paris in 1792 appropriate signs have been put up. The highways rang with the song composed by Rouget de I’lsle in Strassburg but which, because sung by the battalion from Marseilles, was known ever alter as the Marseillaise. „ .It is strange that the two “Routes should mark the Revolution at its height and after its fall, for while the Route de la Marseillaise recalls the fiercest period of the Revolution, the Route Napoleon commemorates the return to France from exile of the dictator who brought the Revolution to an end. , Napoleon escaped from Elba ana landed at Gulf Juan, March 1, /815. In order to avoid arrest by the Royalists of Marseilles, Napoleon crossed the French Alps and marched along the roads which now bears his name, by way of upper Provence, Grasse, Castellane, Barreme, Digne, Sisteron, Gap, Corps, La Mure. At Laffrey the soldiers sent to bar the way acclaimed him. Al Grenoble workmen broke down the gates which the governor of the city wished to keep closed, and in the midst of the wildest enthusiasm, “The Eagle flew from belfry to belfry to the towers of Notre Dame.”